Thursday, April 21, 2011

As an English major/teacher, I know I have a tendency toward over-thinking and over-analyzing. While this does make for interesting alone time and discussions with other aspiring English teachers, this does not necessarily make me a happy or well-adjusted person. Although I don't mind this part of my personality, I do sometimes wish I could be someone who could just get up in the morning and let the sweet breeze touch me all over my face.

"I Have News for You"
by Tony Hoagland

There are people who do not see a broken playground swing as a symbol of ruined childhood

and there are people who don't interpret the behavior of a fly in a motel room as a mocking representation of their thought process.

There are people who don't walk past an empty swimming pool and think about past pleasures unrecoverable

and then stand there blocking the sidewalk for other pedestrians. I have read about a town somewhere in California where human beings

do not send their sinuous feeder roots deep into the potting soil of others' emotional lives

as if they were greedy six-year-olds sucking the last half-inch of milkshake up through a noisy straw;

and other persons in the Midwest who can kiss without debating the imperialist baggage of heterosexuality.

Do you see that creamy, lemon-yellow moon? There are some people, unlike me and you,

who do not yearn after fame or love or quantities of money as unattainable as that moon; thus, they do not later have to waste more time defaming the object of their former ardor.

Or consequently run and crucify themselves in some solitary midnight Starbucks Golgotha.

I have news for you— there are people who get up in the morning and cross a room

and open a window to let the sweet breeze in and let it touch them all over their faces and bodies